Hortus Conclusus / Point Supreme Architects

Athens based Point Supreme Architectswere recently awarded an honorary mention for their Theater Square proposal. The competition asked participants to rethink the idea of an urban square, as the site is surrounded by buildings which makes the small space seemingly negligible in the broad sense of the context. For their proposal, the architects dedicated the square to the magic of nature by making an urban room realized as a ‘secret garden’.

More about the proposal after the break.

For the urban room, tall palm trees create a landmark that is at the scale of the city, while at street level ,the garden becomes a place for the imagination with local plants and flowers creating open and closed spaces of light and shadow.

The surrounding office buildings are converted into contemporary housing with new balconies facing the garden. The streets are “pedestrianised”, cleared of obstacles and reoccupied with a series of playgrounds that service local families and activate the public space. In this way, the entire street surface becomes a level capable of being activated by a variety of user needs.